Dealing with aggressive behaviour

My DS is now 7. Diagnosed with SPD and anxiety. He was seeing an OT to help him with the anxiety but the course finished. Lately when he has a meltdown he is becoming very aggressive/violent towards me. He will punch, kick and push me. I am not sure what to do in this situation. I calmly keep repeating that it is not acceptable and he is not allowed to hurt me, however he just ignores me and keeps right on yelling and laying into me. I never imagined that I would be that mother that gets hit by her own child :( This needs to stop. I don't see a good future for a child who relies on hitting the people closest to him for anger management and to deal with disappointment.

I have mentioned the violence to the family psych that I still see and she asked how I dealt with it but then we must have moved on to another topic because I don't remember her giving any advice of how to actually handle it. I won't be seeing her for a while so I am left wondering what the hell to do with this child. Today it was because I didn't let him lick the bowl after making muffins.

Arte :hug:. I don't really know. But make some phone calls. Use the contacts you've already got (the OT and the family psych and anyone else you've had contact with who has been either understanding or helpful) and ring them up and tell them this is a problem and you don't know what to do. Let them give you some strategies. It sounds a lot like pent up frustration, so the trick will be to teach him to recognise his feeling-state and arousal level and dial it down. The bit i don't know is how to get from here to there. In the meantime, give him clear verbals that hitting, pushing or kicking is not acceptable, it is never acceptable, and follow though with an immediate consequence. I'm not above putting my kid in time out at age 7. Some reflection afterwards (in a calmer moment) might help too. At school they have a traffic light tool, where they get kids to identify the "red light" behaviours, and then to identify a "green light behaviour" they could have chosen instead. The emphasis is getting the kids to recognise they have choices rather than just being reactive all the time. Of course that's easier said than done so keep asking questions until you've got something that works. :hug:

I can't do time out - he simply refuses to go and unless I physically manhandle him to his room I can't get him there and even then he will come out after 3 seconds and the saga begins again. I have discussed the meltdowns with the psych and they are instant with no build up, like a switch has gone off and it is too late to stop it as soon as it starts itms. She said that is a reasonably common description but now that I think of it she didn't give me much of what to do once it was started. I will look into the red light/green light behaviour stuff though - offering him an alternative in hindsight is a good idea.

I will give the psych a ring I guess, although I am pretty hesitant since I left a message to cancel out next session because I was supposed to bring DH along and I chickened out lol. Apparently being a doormat with a disrespectful husband gives you disrespectful children and I can't fix that without DH's help but the chance of improvement vs chance of ***** storm is not favourable so I am procrastinating.

My ds usually storms off hitting the walls and kicking out at his sisters, hasn't attacked me yet. We send him to his room until he calms down. He doesn't want to go obviously but I keep on saying it until he eventually goes. It is extremely hard, he hasn't been diagnosed with anything other than anxiety (yet) but we haven't finished our assessment with the child psychologist yet. I mainly send him to his room so I don't get tempted to hurt him...he ate his dinner in his room the other night after losing his temper and kicking his sister (when it had nothing to do with her)

Is he medicated for his anxiety? We are thinking of taking that option for ds because living this way is horrible - for him and for us.

Not medicated for anxiety. The psych has basically put DS to the side and wants to work on the family dynamics because it isn't fair to ask DS to do all the changing when it is directly opposite of the example he sees every day.

Sorry you are dealing with this as well :( How is sleep at your place now? We seem to have finally made it!! There were days when I never thought it would happen but often no child wakes up all night :) DS sleeps in our bed and DD2 (and DD1) sometimes come in but on the whole it is a world of different from that every 1-2 hours for months on end nightmare that I lived for way too long.

Yeah the child psychologist basically said it was a family problem here too. Which is fine with his temper cos i lose my **** all the time - but anxiety isn't being managed by us controlling our temper.

Sleep. Hmm. Hit and miss. He cried last night at bedtime, he is always scared of everything and sometimes comes in to our room but unfortunately he has to go back to his own bed because dd3 is always in with us. He shares a room with all his sisters and always wants to sleep in the same bed as them. He absolutely hates being by himself, even going downstairs or to the toilet - if nobody goes with him he gets really upset and refuses to go.